When I wrote my memoir, the publishers were really confused. Was it about me as a child refugee, or as a woman who set up a high-tech software company back in the 1960s, one that went public and eventually employed over 8,500 people? Or was it as a mother of an autistic child? Or as a philanthropist that's now given away serious money? Well, it turns out, I'm all of these. So let me tell you my story.
Keď som písala svoje pamäte, vydavatelia boli skutočne zmätení. Boli o mne, ako detskom utečencovi, alebo o žene, ktorá založila high-tech softvérovú firmu v 60. rokoch, ktorá sa zverejnila a napokon zamestnala viac ako 8 500 ľudí? Alebo boli o matke autistického dieťaťa? Alebo filantropovi, ktorý veľkoryso dáva množstvo peňazí? Ukázalo sa, že som všetko z toho. Poviem vám svoj príbeh.
All that I am stems from when I got onto a train in Vienna, part of the Kindertransport that saved nearly 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi Europe. I was five years old, clutching the hand of my nine-year-old sister and had very little idea as to what was going on. "What is England and why am I going there?" I'm only alive because so long ago, I was helped by generous strangers. I was lucky, and doubly lucky to be later reunited with my birth parents. But, sadly, I never bonded with them again. But I've done more in the seven decades since that miserable day when my mother put me on the train than I would ever have dreamed possible. And I love England, my adopted country, with a passion that perhaps only someone who has lost their human rights can feel. I decided to make mine a life that was worth saving. And then, I just got on with it. (Laughter)
Môj príbeh začal, keď som nastúpila na vlak vo Viedni, časť Kindertransportu, ktorý zachránil takmer 10 000 židovských detí z nacistickej Európy. Mala som 5 rokov, zvierala som ruku svojej 9-ročnej sestry a nechápala som, čo sa okolo mňa deje. „Čo je Anglicko a prečo tam idem?“ Žijem jedine preto, že raz dávno mi pomohli štedrí neznámi. Mala som šťastie a to dvakrát – lebo som sa neskôr znovu vrátila k svojim rodičom. Ale, bohužiaľ, už som si k nim nevytvorila znovu puto. Ale počas tých siedmych dekád, od toho hrozného dňa, keď ma moja mama nasadila na vlak, som urobila viac, než by som pokladala za možné. A milujem Anglicko, moju adoptívnu krajinu, vášňou, ktorú možno môže cítiť len ten, kto už stratil svoje ľudské práva. Rozhodla som sa urobiť svoj život hodným zachránenia. A nejak mi to ostalo. (smiech)
Let me take you back to the early 1960s. To get past the gender issues of the time, I set up my own software house at one of the first such startups in Britain. But it was also a company of women, a company for women, an early social business. And people laughed at the very idea because software, at that time, was given away free with hardware. Nobody would buy software, certainly not from a woman. Although women were then coming out of the universities with decent degrees, there was a glass ceiling to our progress. And I'd hit that glass ceiling too often, and I wanted opportunities for women.
Vráťme sa späť do skorých šesťdesiatych rokov. Aby som obišla rodové problémy v tom čase, založila som svoj softvérový podnik, jeden z prvých takých startupov v Británii. Bola to tiež firma žien, firma pre ženy, skoré sociálne podnikanie. Ľudia sa smiali už na samotnej myšlienke, lebo softvér, v tom čase, bol dávaný zadarmo s hardvérom. Nikto by si nekúpil softvér, a určite nie od ženy. Hoci ženy v tom čase vychádzali z univerzít so slušnými diplomami, náš úspech mal sklenený strop. A ja som do toho stropu udierala príliš často a chcela som možnosti pre ženy.
I recruited professionally qualified women who'd left the industry on marriage, or when their first child was expected and structured them into a home-working organization. We pioneered the concept of women going back into the workforce after a career break. We pioneered all sorts of new, flexible work methods: job shares, profit-sharing, and eventually, co-ownership when I took a quarter of the company into the hands of the staff at no cost to anyone but me. For years, I was the first woman this, or the only woman that. And in those days, I couldn't work on the stock exchange, I couldn't drive a bus or fly an airplane. Indeed, I couldn't open a bank account without my husband's permission. My generation of women fought the battles for the right to work and the right for equal pay.
Zamestnala som profesionálne kvalifikované ženy, ktoré opustili odbor, keď sa vydali alebo keď čakali prvé dieťa, a usporiadala som ich do organizácie, pracujúcej z domu. Boli sme priekopníčky v myšlienke návrate žien do práce po pauze v kariére. Boli sme priekopníčky v množstve nových, flexibilných pracovných metód: zdieľanie práce, zdieľanie zisku a napokon spoločného vlastníctva, keď som dala štvrtinu firmy do rúk zamestnancom, čo nestálo nikoho nič, len mňa. Roky som bola prvá žena v tom a jediná v tamtom. A v tých časoch som nemohla pracovať na burze, nemohla som riadiť autobus či lietadlo. Skutočne, nemohla som ani otvoriť bankový účet bez povolenia manžela. Moja generácia žien bojovala za práva žien pracovať a za ich právo na rovnakú mzdu.
Nobody really expected much from people at work or in society because all the expectations then were about home and family responsibilities. And I couldn't really face that, so I started to challenge the conventions of the time, even to the extent of changing my name from "Stephanie" to "Steve" in my business development letters, so as to get through the door before anyone realized that he was a she. (Laughter)
Nikto veľa neočakával od ľudí v práci, či v spoločnosti, pretože všetky očakávania boli o povinnostiach doma a v rodine. A ja som sa na to nemohla pozerať, tak som začala vzdorovať konvenciám tých čias, dokonca som si v obchodných správach zmenila meno zo Stephanie na Steve, aby som tak prekĺzla skôr, než si niekto uvedomí, že on je ona. (smiech)
My company, called Freelance Programmers, and that's precisely what it was, couldn't have started smaller: on the dining room table, and financed by the equivalent of 100 dollars in today's terms, and financed by my labor and by borrowing against the house. My interests were scientific, the market was commercial -- things such as payroll, which I found rather boring. So I had to compromise with operational research work, which had the intellectual challenge that interested me and the commercial value that was valued by the clients: things like scheduling freight trains, time-tabling buses, stock control, lots and lots of stock control. And eventually, the work came in. We disguised the domestic and part-time nature of the staff by offering fixed prices, one of the very first to do so. And who would have guessed that the programming of the black box flight recorder of Supersonic Concord would have been done by a bunch of women working in their own homes. (Applause)
Moja firma, nazvaná Freelance Programátori – a presne to sme boli nemohla začať v menšom: na jedálenskom stole, financovaná dnešným ekvivalentom 100 dolárov, a financovaná mojou prácou a na pôžičku na dom. Moje záujmy boli vedecké, trh bol komerčný – veci ako výplatná páska, čo ma nudilo. Takže som to musela vyvažovať operačnou výskumnou prácou, ktorá bola pre mňa zaujímavou intelektuálnou výzvou a komerčnou hodnotou, na ktorej záležalo klientom: veci ako plánovanie nákladných vlakov, rozpisy autobusov, kopa a kopa kontrol stavu zásob. A napokon práca prišla. Zakrývali sme prácu z domu a polovičné úvazky tým, že sme ponúkli fixné ceny – ako jedny z prvých. A kto by si pomyslel, že naprogramovanie čiernej skrinky pre Supersonic Concord bude spravené partiou žien, pracujúcich z domu. (potlesk)
All we used was a simple "trust the staff" approach and a simple telephone. We even used to ask job applicants, "Do you have access to a telephone?"
Stačilo jednoducho dôverovať zamestnancom a obyčajný telefón. Záujemcov o prácu sme sa pýtali: „Máte prístup k telefónu?“
An early project was to develop software standards on management control protocols. And software was and still is a maddeningly hard-to-control activity, so that was enormously valuable. We used the standards ourselves, we were even paid to update them over the years, and eventually, they were adopted by NATO. Our programmers -- remember, only women, including gay and transgender -- worked with pencil and paper to develop flowcharts defining each task to be done. And they then wrote code, usually machine code, sometimes binary code, which was then sent by mail to a data center to be punched onto paper tape or card and then re-punched, in order to verify it. All this, before it ever got near a computer. That was programming in the early 1960s.
Jeden z prvých projektov bolo vyvinúť softvérové štandardy pre protokoly kontroly manažmentu. Softvér bol a stále je šialene ťažko kontrolovateľná činnosť, takže to bolo nesmierne dôležité. Samé sme tieto štandardy využívali, boli sme aj zaplatené, aby sme ich postupne vyvíjali, a napokon ich prijalo aj NATO. Naše programátorky – všetko ženy, vrátane gay a transgender – s ceruzkou a papierom kreslili vývojové diagramy, definujúc všetky úlohy. A potom písali kód, obvykle strojový kód, niekedy binárny, ktorý sa potom posielal poštou do dátového centra, kde bol vyrazený na papierovú pásku alebo karty a znova vyrazený, aby bol overený. Toto všetko prv, kým sme sa vôbec dostali k počítaču. Také bolo programovanie začiatkom 60. rokov.
In 1975, 13 years from startup, equal opportunity legislation came in in Britain and that made it illegal to have our pro-female policies. And as an example of unintended consequences, my female company had to let the men in. (Laughter)
V roku 1975, 13 rokov po založení, v Británii prišla legislatíva rovnakých možností, a tak sa naša pro-ženská politika stala nelegálnou. Ako príklad nečakaných dôsledkov, moja ženská firma musela prijať mužov. (smiech)
When I started my company of women, the men said, "How interesting, because it only works because it's small." And later, as it became sizable, they accepted, "Yes, it is sizable now, but of no strategic interest." And later, when it was a company valued at over three billion dollars, and I'd made 70 of the staff into millionaires, they sort of said, "Well done, Steve!" (Laughter) (Applause)
Keď som začala svoju ženskú firmu, muži hovorili: „Toto funguje len preto, že je to taká malá firma.“ A neskôr, keď narastala, uznali: „Áno, je rozsiahlejšia, ale bez strategického významu.“ A neskôr, keď to bola firma ohodnotená viac ako 3 miliardami dolárov, a zo 70 členov firmy sa stali milionárky, povedali zhruba: „Výborne, Steve!“ (smiech) (potlesk)
You can always tell ambitious women by the shape of our heads: They're flat on top for being patted patronizingly. (Laughter) (Applause) And we have larger feet to stand away from the kitchen sink. (Laughter)
Ambiciózne ženy môžete vždy rozoznať podľa tvaru našich hláv: Sú navrchu ploché z toho, ako ich blahosklonne poklepávajú. (smiech) (potlesk) A máme väčšie chodidlá, aby sme stáli ďalej od šporáka. (smiech)
Let me share with you two secrets of success: Surround yourself with first-class people and people that you like; and choose your partner very, very carefully. Because the other day when I said, "My husband's an angel," a woman complained -- "You're lucky," she said, "mine's still alive." (Laughter)
Poviem vám dve tajomstvá úspechu: Obklopte sa prvotriednymi ľuďmi a ľuďmi, ktorých máte radi; a veľmi, veľmi opatrne si vyberte partnera. Pretože keď som minule povedala: „Môj manžel je anjel“, iná žena si vzdychla – „Máš šťastie,“ povedala, „môj je ešte nažive.“ (smiech)
If success were easy, we'd all be millionaires. But in my case, it came in the midst of family trauma and indeed, crisis. Our late son, Giles, was an only child, a beautiful, contented baby. And then, at two and a half, like a changeling in a fairy story, he lost the little speech that he had and turned into a wild, unmanageable toddler. Not the terrible twos; he was profoundly autistic and he never spoke again. Giles was the first resident in the first house of the first charity that I set up to pioneer services for autism. And then there's been a groundbreaking Prior's Court school for pupils with autism and a medical research charity, again, all for autism. Because whenever I found a gap in services, I tried to help. I like doing new things and making new things happen. And I've just started a three-year think tank for autism.
Keby bol úspech ľahký, všetci by sme boli milionármi. Ale v mojom prípade to prišlo uprostred rodinnej drámy a krízy. Náš zosnulý syn, Giles, bol jedináčik, krásne spokojné bábätko. A potom, keď mal dva a pol roka, akoby zo zlého sna, stratil tú trochu reči, ktorú ovládal, a zmenil sa na divoké, nezvládnuteľné batoľa. Nebolo to len obdobie; bol silno autistický a už nikdy neprehovoril. Giles bol prvým obyvateľom prvého domu prvej charity, ktorú som založila na vytvorenie služieb pre autizmus. Potom prišla priekopnícka škola Prior's Court pre deti s autizmom, charita pre medicínsky výskum, znova pre autizmus. Pretože kdekoľvek som našla medzeru v službách, snažila som sa pomôcť. Rada robím nové veci a chcem, aby sa veci diali. A práve som začala trojročný „think tank“ pre autizmus.
And so that some of my wealth does go back to the industry from which it stems, I've also founded the Oxford Internet Institute and other IT ventures. The Oxford Internet Institute focuses not on the technology, but on the social, economic, legal and ethical issues of the Internet.
A aby časť môjho bohatstva išla naspäť do priemyslu, z ktorého pochádza, založila som Oxford Internet Institute a iné IT podniky. Oxford Internet Institute sa nevenuje len technológii, ale aj sociálnym, ekonomickým, právnym a etickým problémom internetu.
Giles died unexpectedly 17 years ago now. And I have learned to live without him, and I have learned to live without his need of me. Philanthropy is all that I do now. I need never worry about getting lost because several charities would quickly come and find me. (Laughter)
Giles umrel nečakane pred 17 rokmi. Naučila som sa žiť bez neho, a naučila som sa žiť bez jeho potreby mňa. Teraz sa venujem už len filantropii. Nemusím sa obávať, že by som sa raz stratila, lebo by ma hneď rýchlo našlo niekoľko charít. (smiech)
It's one thing to have an idea for an enterprise, but as many people in this room will know, making it happen is a very difficult thing and it demands extraordinary energy, self-belief and determination, the courage to risk family and home, and a 24/7 commitment that borders on the obsessive. So it's just as well that I'm a workaholic. I believe in the beauty of work when we do it properly and in humility. Work is not just something I do when I'd rather be doing something else.
Je jedna vec mať nápad na podnikanie, ale ako mnoho z vás vie, prebiť sa je veľmi náročné a vyžaduje neobyčajnú energiu, sebadôveru a odhodlanie, odvahu riskovať rodinu a domov a záväzok na 24/7, ktorý hraničí s posadnutosťou. Takže je dobre, že som workoholik. Verím v krásu práce, keď ju robíme poctivo a pokorne. Práca nie je niečo, čo robím, keď by som radšej bola niekde inde.
We live our lives forward. So what has all that taught me? I learned that tomorrow's never going to be like today, and certainly nothing like yesterday. And that made me able to cope with change, indeed, eventually to welcome change, though I'm told I'm still very difficult.
Žijeme naše životy. Takže čo ma toto všetko naučilo? Zistila som, že zajtrajšok nikdy nebude ako dnešok, a rozhodne nie ako včerajšok. A vďaka tomu sa viem vyrovnať so zmenou. Áno, časom zmenu uvítať, hoci mi vravia, že som stále veľmi náročná.
Thank you very much.
Ďakujem.
(Applause)
(potlesk)